Mirk Abbey, Volume 2 (of 3)
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by James Payn 10 Sep, 2021
Excerpt.. "MARY,” said Lady Lisgard gravely, when her attendant had closed the door behind her, “I want to have a little serious talk with you to-night.” “As you please, my Lady,” returned Mistress Forest, in ... Read more

Excerpt..

"MARY,” said Lady Lisgard gravely, when her attendant had closed the door behind her, “I want to have a little serious talk with you to-night.”

“As you please, my Lady,” returned Mistress Forest, in a tone which the other, did not fail to mark: it was a very respectful tone—a more humble one even than she was ordinarily wont to use—but there was a certain deliberation and set resolve about it too, which expressed as decidedly, as though she had used the words: “I am ready to listen, madam; but I know very well what you are going to ask me, and I have made up my mind already to answer 'No.'”

“Mary,” continued my Lady earnestly, but not without a tremor in her kind soft voice, “come and sit here on the sofa beside me, and let us not be mistress and maid tonight, but only friends.”

“Yes, madam;” and Mary's voice trembled too, for this unlooked-for arrangement would place her, she knew, at a disadvantage in the argument which was certainly at hand. “We have known one another many, many years, Mary—more than half our lives—and I don't think we have had a single quarrel yet.”

“Not one, ma'am, not one,” assented the waiting-maid; already, after the manner of her susceptible kind, beginning to cry.

“I can remember you when quite a child, Mary; not fifteen years old; as willing and kind-hearted a girl as the sun ever shone upon; and when I had not a friend in the world, nor even so much as a coin that I could call my own, and when I was weak and sick at heart, having lost all that was dear to me, I remember who it was that tended and caressed me as though I was her own sister.”

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  • Public Domain Books
  • English
  • 9781508456315
Author
James Payn (28 February 1830 – 25 March 1898), was an English novelist Among the periodicals he edited were Chambers's Journal in Edinburgh and the Cornhill Magazine in London. Payn's father, Willi...
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